Marguerite-Antoinette Painclair, known professionally as Antoinette Gensoul-Desfonds (c.1769âÂÂ1824), was a pioneering French sculptor who exhibited at the Paris Salon during the French Revolutionary Period.
Marguerite-Antoinette Painclair was born around 1769. She received her artistic training in London, studying with Agostino Carlini, an Italian sculptor of the Royal Academy. Later, she married fellow artist Jean-Louis-Basile Gensoul, a student of Jean-Baptiste Regnault.
Gensoul-Desfonts was a committed supporter of Revolutionary and Republican ideals. Her sympathies are reflected in the works she exhibited at the 1793 Paris Salon, which included a proposed monument celebrating Liberty and the triumph of Law, Philosophy, and Charity over Despotism, as well as a terracotta sculpture of the revolutionary martyr Michel Le Peletier. The couple's son, born that year, was named Brutus, evoking the Roman figure celebrated for defending the Republic against tyranny.
During the early years of the French Revolution, Gensoul-Desfonts took part in efforts by artists to defend their professional autonomy and secure fair access to state support, signing petitions that challenged secret appointments and called for greater transparency in the governance of the arts.
Gensoul-Desfonts maintained her studio on Paris's Left Bank, first on the rue des Cordeliers and then on the rue de Vaugirard, before later moving to the northeast of the city on the rue de Bondi.
She exhibited at the Paris Salon between 1791 and 1799, after which no artistic activity is recorded. Subsequently, she moved to the village of Connaux in the Gard district, where she died on 16 October 1824 at her home.
Antoinette Gensoul-Desfonts was primarily a sculptor and relief artist, producing allegorical works and intimate genre scenes in terracotta. She belonged to the first generation of women sculptors in France to work on state commissions for public or semi-public spaces, a pioneering cohort which also included Marie-Anne Collot, Julie Charpentier, Félicie de Fauveau, and Marie dâÂÂOrléans. In 1792, Gensoul-Desfonts received a commission to create reliefs for a planned column to be erected on the ruins of the Bastille. The plaster model for the column was exhibited at the 1793 Paris Salon.
Another of Antoinette's works shown that year, Michel Le Peletier, on his deathbed, writing his final words, was likely a sketch model created for the National ConventionâÂÂs competition for a marble monument to Le Peletier, launched that January. Neither project was ultimately carried forward.
A terracotta sketch of Le Peletier on his deathbed, held by the Musée Carnavalet, has been tentatively attributed by scholar Suzanne Glover Lindsay to Gensoul-Desfonts. However, the inscription does not match a known example of her handwriting.
The names of a number of works by Gensoul-Desfonts are known from catalogues of the Paris Salon.